Catching Up

I have to apologize that I haven’t written for a while, for things here have been quite busy of late. We spent four days last week (Wednesday night to Saturday afternoon) in Moscow with my boss and his family for Thanksgiving. Here is a picture of them in Red Square standing in front of St. Basil’s Cathedral, by far one of the most recognizable sights of Russia. We had a great time, but were busy throughout.

Our train trip home was interesting for two reasons: first, we took the same train on Saturday—3:07 p.m. arriving at 5:30 (which is a great train because it is 30-45 minutes shorter than other electric trains that run the same route)—except a day earlier. We had planned to leave on Sunday, but when we were in Moscow, Brent told me that the schedule had changed for the pastor’s conference in St. Petersburg, which meant that I was leaving on Monday instead of Tuesday. So, we thought it best to return a day earlier. Well, it turns out that Saturday is the day for traveling to and from Moscow. Every Sunday trip that we’ve taken has always been on rather sparsely filled trains. Last Saturday, however, the train was packed, which meant too many people trying to sit down, thus making everyone uncomfortable. The first hour was especially bad, until we reached a few stops where seemingly hundreds of people disembarked at once.

The other interesting thing about our train ride home was that the people sitting next to us bribed the conductor so as to not have to pay for their ticket. Even though the train was packed, the conductors (there are usually 3 or 4 who work their way through the train together) were squeezing their way through the overly crowded wagons. When they got to our area, the people next to us started having a discussion about money. I saw the guy look at his 10 ruble bills, counting how many he had (10 rubles is roughly 35 cents). He ultimately decided on 40 rubles. As the conductor came, he ended up doing a bit of sweet talking to her, evidently telling her that they were soon getting off (which they did) and so he handed her the 40 rubles. Now, I know this was a bribe for a couple of reasons: first, the guy was deciding how much he should give, trying to balance giving enough to succeed in bribing the lady without having to give more than the actual cost of the tickets; second, the conductor, upon taking the bribe and then looking up, was very embarrassed and quickly looked away; third, as I discussed this with my language teacher the next on Monday, she told me that it was a bribe if she (the conductor) didn’t give out a receipt—which she didn’t.

Anyways, coming home is always a bit of a nightmare because we are always tired from the journey—especially because of David, who is a lot of work and who requires tons of stuff that we have to lug around with us—and our rather clean apartment quickly becomes disheveled. So, after church on Sunday, the rest of the day was spent cleaning and getting ready for me leaving on Monday. So, I just have returned from the pastor’s conference, which was hosted at the Ingrian seminary in Koltice, just outside of St. Petersburg, and am only now catching up on things such as emails and this blog. Sorry about the absence lately!